Escherichia coli strains overproducing DinB undergo survival loss; however, the mechanisms regulating this phenotype are poorly understood. Here we report a genetic selection revealing DinB residues essential to effect this loss-of-survival phenotype. The selection uses strains carrying both an antimutator allele of DNA polymerase III (Pol III) ␣-subunit (dnaE915) and either chromosomal or plasmid-borne dinB alleles. We hypothesized that dnaE915 cells would respond to DinB overproduction differently from dnaE ؉ cells because the dnaE915 allele is known to have an altered genetic interaction with dinB ؉ compared to its interaction with dnaE ؉ . Notably, we observe a loss-of-survival phenotype in dnaE915 strains with either a chromosomal catalytically inactive dinB(D103N) allele or a low-copy-number plasmid-borne dinB ؉ upon DNA damage treatment. Furthermore, we find that the loss-of-survival phenotype occurs independently of DNA damage treatment in a dnaE915 strain expressing the catalytically inactive dinB(D103N) allele from a low-copy-number plasmid. The selective pressure imposed resulted in suppressor mutations that eliminated growth defects. The dinB intragenic mutations examined were either base pair substitutions or those that we inferred to be loss of function (i.e., deletions and insertions). Further analyses of selected novel dinB alleles, generated by single-base-pair substitutions in the dnaE915 strain, indicated that these no longer effect loss of survival upon overproduction in dnaE ؉ strains. These mutations are mapped to specific areas of DinB; this permits us to gain insights into the mechanisms underlying the DinB-mediated overproduction loss-of-survival phenotype.A ll cells accumulate DNA damage that, if left unrepaired, will stall DNA replication due to the inability of high-fidelity DNA polymerases (Pol) to use lesion-containing DNA as templates, a potentially lethal event (1). To ensure survival, Escherichia coli responds to replication fork stalling by upregulating the expression of the SOS-regulated genes (1-3), among which are specialized low-fidelity DNA polymerase genes. These polymerases can perform translesion synthesis (TLS), consisting of both insertion opposite to and elongation from DNA lesions on the template strand (4). TLS can result in elevated mutagenesis. In fact, data suggest that mutations responsible for resistance to several classes of antibiotics require TLS DNA polymerases (5-8). Moreover, these DNA polymerases appear to play a role in the development of disorders such as cancer in metazoans (9-12).E. coli strains lacking the dinB gene (⌬dinB), encoding DinB (DNA Pol IV), one of the TLS DNA polymerases, are sensitive to nitrofurazone (NFZ) and 4-nitroquinoline-1-oxide (4-NQO) (13-15), reagents that generate persistent DNA lesions on the N 2 group of deoxyguanine (N 2 -dG), as well as alkylating agents such as methyl methanesulfonate (MMS) (14,16). Moreover, strains overproducing DinB undergo survival loss. It has been proposed that this is the result of lethal double-s...